The concept of fluid filter cartridges, and more particularly cylindrical fluid filter cartridges for filtering fluids, is well known in the art. In general the cartridges contain a cylindrical outer support member, a pair of end caps, a filter media, an inner support core and an external screen. In distinction to bag-type filters, the filter cartridge retains its cylindrical shape so that the cartridge can be installed directly into a cylindrical housing. One of the advantages of filter cartridges is that the walls of the filter cartridge can be made with a pleated filter media. The pleated filter media has a large surface area for filtering material from the fluid. In contrast, bag-type filters have less given surface area for the same given size since they do not contain pleated sidewalls. The bag-type filters generally have been used in applications where disposal is a problem. That is, the bags are usually made of flexible material and occupy less disposal space than a filter cartridge since the filter cartridge includes an interior or exterior support screen that precludes the filter cartridge from being readily compacted for disposable. The present invention provides improvement to prior art filter cartridges by providing a compactable non resilient filter cartridge that contains no inner support core or external support screen. A combination of the lack of an inner support core and the use of crushable materials in the end housing and the filter material permits the filter cartridge to be compacted and thus less costly to dispose of.